06/15/2016

Like many travelers to and from New York City, I've spent hours in LaGuardia Airport, at all hours of the day and night.

The only notable incident for all of that dead time was seeing New Orleans music legend Dr. John in the men's room.

While crowded old LaGuardia is often decried, I don't find it that horrible, although its ambience is closer to a 1956 bus station in Birmingham, Ala., than to a 21st century airport.

Was Paul Ryan sleeping when they found $4 billion?

On Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden joined New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for the ground-breaking ceremony for a $4 billion rebuilding of LaGuardia. The airport will keep operating during the project, scheduled for completion in 2021.

The renovation will give LaGuardia its first rail connection, although the plan already is drawing criticism for benefiting white collar tourists rather than airport workers. Sounds like the rail could be the worst option to get to the airport.

After years of alarming rides with spaced out cabbies and Brooklyn limo drivers who looked like Tony Soprano's cousin, I might give rail a try, if I'm still able.

And, cynics are saying that by the time the work is done, the airport already will be obsolete, and that New York's construction unions will delay the project for years longer.

The workers will do fine. However, the renovated airport is likely to sink into Flushing Bay before too many years when melting ice caps raise sea levels.

Hey Joe, America is now the Third World

Biden a few years ago said LaGuardia is like the Third World.

Joe doesn't fly much to commercial airports. The entire U.S. flight system is like the third world, if not worse.

Atlanta, with its long security and delayed exits from airplanes, is horrible. LAX is like a laxative without a nearby bathroom. San Francisco has rail, but you need to be a Silicon Valley algorithm geek to figure out how to catch the right train. Seattle makes you wish 'Amazon would take over.

Despite the naysayers, good for New York.

When will New York match Kolkata?

Now maybe something will be done for an even worse New York travel terminial, Penn Station. Projects have been proposed for years, while the train terminal deteriorates.

If LaGuardia's the Third World, what is Penn Station?

It's worse than Kolkata, where one of its rail stations opened in 2006, five years after the city's name was changed from Calcutta.

Don't worry New York. There are still 85 years left in the 21s century to modernize Penn Station.